herbst blick auf bozen ab rafensteinerweg fr
herbst blick auf bozen ab rafensteinerweg fr

Legend: The Gatekeeper of Hell

The South Tyrolean legend with its ominous name tells about a boy of about 15 years

On a market day in Bolzano, the boy was conspicuous by his melancholy among the plenty of laughing and busy farmers. His hair made him look like an old man and his eyes had lost all their shine. Finally, a farmer sat down next to him and offered him a glass of wine. The boy started to tell that his name was Jörgl and he had worked for many years at a foreign farmstead. Hard work and home sickness tortured Jörgl, when he was sent to the forest one day to collect wood.

Suddenly, all the sounds in the forest broke off and a man with raven hair and eyes appeared. He offered Jörgl to work for him for seven years and Jörgl accepted in the hope that he could escape his hard fate. In the next few days the boy saw many different towns, met plenty of people and finally arrived in a lonesome valley with a black gate. And he understood who the foreigner was.

Jörgl's job was to be the Gatekeeper of Hell for the next seven years. Meat and wine should be his pay but no water to quench his thirst. Seven terrible years long he saw known and unknown souls to which he had to open the gates, and he had to sustain screams and curses and couldn't do anything against them. After the end of his job Jörgl was allowed to return to the world of the living and at last to come back to his family. But all his life he did not become happy again, too much he had seen and heard at the gates of hell.

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